Parachuting with Javelin
Lena Vayn, Head of Talent
There is simply nothing more important to a start-up than the team it puts together. And for an early stage venture capital firm like the one I work for, Javelin Venture Partners, it’s always a top priority to help its founders recruit outstanding employees who both perform well and are a cultural fit. Of course that includes referring great candidates, advising on compensation, giving guidance on org structures & hiring practices, etc. — let’s call these things table stakes. But we wanted to contribute more to our companies, so 6 months ago we started a new “parachuting” program. This goes beyond giving them a fish or even teaching them to fish. This is living with them for a while and helping them build a first class fishing operation.
First a little bit of background… I’ve been a recruiter for tech start-ups for over eight years. I started on the agency side, working for Riviera. After learning the trade and recruiting a lot of engineering candidates for a variety of tech companies, I decided to work directly for a start-up as an internal recruiter. I wanted to help a company grow from the ground up, from its first employee, to culture creation, to establishing more scalable recruiting, interviewing and hiring processes. I enjoyed the experience so much that I decided to duplicate it with several other start-ups. And while there were lots of challenges along the way — both for me and for the start-ups — the overall impact I was making was measurably significant. And importantly, I was learning a ton and continuously improving my methods.
At this point I asked myself, wouldn’t it be great if I could apply my expertise to multiple start-ups simultaneously? But I didn’t want to go back to an agency, just recruiting and funneling candidates for companies to which I didn’t have much loyalty. I wanted a family of companies I cared about, large enough that I’d enjoy the variety, but small enough that I’d really get to dig in, help shape the cultures, and be very long-term focused on their success.
Around the same time, the partners at Javelin Venture Partners were brainstorming about how they could help their portfolio more with recruiting, beyond the typical actions a VC would take to add value. This seemed to be an incredibly consistent and urgent request of their founders. They recognized that while several firms had added in-house talent scouts, in most cases they were still playing the role of an agency recruiter rather than someone truly imbedded in the start-ups.
As serendipity would have it, I had gotten to know Alex Gurevich, one of the partners at Javelin. And when this subject came up, we both realized that this could be a great opportunity to join forces. But to make a truly unique and effective talent strategy, we needed to work out a flexible model that worked for both Javelin and its portfolio company’s management teams. So together with Alex and Javelin’s other two partners, Noah and Jed, we designed a hybrid “parachuting” program. While it’s still early, it seems to working really well.
Here’s how it works: first, I would serve as Javelin’s internal talent expert, helping companies with recruiting various positions, advising them on best practices for interviewing and hiring, and generally acting a the go-to person for recruiting questions. This is a salary based, full time position paid by Javelin. Additionally, for periods of 2 weeks to 2 months, I parachute into individual portfolio companies, dedicating more focused time on their specific recruiting initiatives. This could include setting up processes and systems (like applicant tracking) or an interviewing game plan, more intense recruiting for harder to fill executive positions, training their internal recruiters, and even working with their outsourced recruiting agencies to get the best possible outcome. By being onsite for 3–4 days per week during that time, I truly soak up and contribute to each company’s culture, processes and recruiting approach. I get to know their needs in a way that is almost impossible when doing it remotely. And since Javelin still subsidizes my compensation during these deployments, the companies pay me a fraction of what they’d have to pay a full time employee or an agency.
Another major benefit of this program is in time savings. When a company “hires” me to parachute in, they are getting immediate help on a critical need from someone they know has already been vetted. Hiring an internal recruiter, or even a contract recruiter, takes a lot of time. Getting referrals, setting up interviews, checking references — these things are all time intensive. When I parachute in, I start with their trust and can hit the ground running on their most pressing recruiting needs. And then if they want a longer-term solution, and without being rushed, I can help them eventually replace me with a full time internal recruiter.
Even during deployments, I still have a few days a week to devote to the rest of the portfolio companies (at Javelin HQ). That time is focused on sourcing, hiring advice, referrals to 3rd party vendors, etc. It’s a model that seems to work for all constituents — including me! And so far, demand for the parachute program, and satisfaction in the results, have both been above our high expectations. Clearly, this is something that start-ups want and get immediate value from.
One of the most rewarding aspects of my career in recruiting has been seeing the progression of candidates I’ve placed. These are people that end up making big impacts in the companies they’ve joined, and who sometimes even become founders and CEOs of their own companies. With my role at Javelin and with the help of our new parachute program, I’m looking forward to getting even closer to both the companies and the candidates, and being much more invested in both of their long-term success.